Russian jets back Syrian counteroffensive – military

Hundreds of jihadist fighters have been killed around Aleppo, Moscow said

Russian fighter jets stationed in Syria have carried out airstrikes against jihadist militants attacking the northern city of Aleppo, the spokesman for Moscow’s expeditionary force has said. 

The Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group and allied militias attacked government-controlled territory in northern Syria on Wednesday, breaking a fragile truce mediated by Russia and Türkiye in 2020. 

“Providing support to the Syrian Arab Army, the Russian Aerospace Forces are carrying out missile and bomb strikes on the equipment and manpower of illegal armed groups, command posts, warehouses, and artillery positions of terrorists. Over the past 24 hours, at least 200 militants have been eliminated,” Colonel Oleg Ignatнuk, the deputy head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, told reporters in a briefing on Friday. He added that another 400 militants were killed by Russian and Syrian forces the day before. 

Read more

Earlier in the day, HTS told Al Jazeera and Türkiye’s Anadolu news agency that its fighter had entered several neighborhoods of Aleppo. The group claimed to have taken control over some 400 square kilometers of land in Aleppo and Idlib provinces and captured heavy weaponry and other equipment from the Syrian Army. Videos shared on social media purportedly showed HTS gunmen moving Aleppo on foot and in armored vehicles. 

The government in Damascus said its troops have “inflicted heavy losses” on the attackers and regained control of some areas. Local media reported the arrival of Syrian Army reinforcements to both Idlib and Aleppo on Friday.

Before adopting its current name in 2017, HTS was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and was one of the main factions opposing President Bashar Assad’s government during the Syrian Civil War. Jabhat al-Nusra was originally founded as an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in Syria. 

Read more

Russia intervened in the conflict in 2015, helping Assad retake much of the country from al-Nusra, Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), and dozens of US-supported armed groups described by Washington as “moderate rebels.”

Syrian forces lifted the nearly five-year siege of Aleppo in December 2016 and pushed al-Nusra and other groups west into Idlib province. Türkiye took responsibility for Idlib in 2018, vowing to separate terrorists from “legitimate rebels,” but never did so. A March 2020 agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was meant to permanently end the fighting around Idlib.